Sports Massage Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Redondo Beach
Erik Gray specializes in of sports massage and neuromuscular therapy in Los Angeles and two other locations. Remember this: Muscles move bones and not the other way around. This is a fundamental truth of any musculoskeletal system. Therapies that ignore this fact play a hazardous and expensive game of roulette with their client’s healing process. Simply forcing the skeletal structure back into orthographic alignment through mechanical manipulation ignores this rule. Unless the chronic spasm in the affected tissue is calmed first the problem is almost guaranteed to return. If you are a high performance athlete, gymnast, dancer, performer or runner who challenges the limits of your body daily, this is not a game you want to play.
For the treatment of athletes, I use a specific form of sports massage therapy at Gray’s Anatomy L.A. There is a five-stage rehabilitation process. It is my experience that if these five steps are performed in sequence flare-ups and relapse can be avoided.
Remove chronic muscle spasm
Restore range of motion without the pain
Increase flexibility
Improve strength of compromised areas
Endurance training
In 80% of the patients treated if this pattern is followed, relapse can be avoided. The difficulty with most physical therapy programs is that they are designed to start the patient's therapeutic program roughly halfway between steps three and four. This is due to a pre-determined rehab protocol determined by allopathic medical standards that has yielded favorable results for most, but to for all patiences it is applied to. This has more to do with what insurance companies dictate that they will reimburse the healthcare provider for and less to do with what most healthcare provides would like to do to help their clients.
Remember: If the above order is performed out of sequence, re-injury is almost guaranteed. If the muscle spasm that is provoking the soft tissue problem is not calmed, the problem will come back.
After working in a busy rehab clinic for over six years as head of the soft tissue department, The primary complaint heard from clients was: “Mandatory P.T. and strength training was actually making me worse!” They said they 'put-up' with their required P.T. sessions just to receive neuromuscular therapy and sports massage therapy later in there session.
Before beginning a program aimed toward improving your performance on the track, in the water, or on the road it is necessary to manage your body's level of pain. Check with your medically trained doctor first to be clear that they understands the three rules that govern soft tissue issues: physical, dietary, and emotional. These are global factors that have a direct affect on your physiology over time. They will affect the quality of your life experience, or lack there of if ignored. Although they sound easy, they can be tricky to consistently apply. I offer a range of professional resources it assist you in building your support team.
Muscle tone, if allowed to become chronically tight, does have a direct link to a catalogue of pathologies, sometimes labeled as “syndromes.” How many people do you know who have told you that their low back is always aching, they continuously, have headaches or inexplicable body pains? Add to this the pathologies of degenerative disc disease (DDD) or spondylolisthesis (slipped spinal vertebra) or the specter of spinal surgery. This kind of worry and stress can distract you form your competitive focus.
In order to rid the body of chronic pain, we need to get rid of chronic muscle spasms first. Lactic acid is a bi-product of cell metabolism when in an anaerobic state. When allowed to build up within muscle tissue, it can trigger varying degrees of spasm. Skeletal muscle tissue is your power source you need working properly when you reach inside for that last bit to win the race or make your goal happen. You don't need it to be make more susceptible to spasm from an excess of lactic acid.
These chronic pain challenges affecting your performance can be addressed with the help sports massage therapy, eventually eliminating them. For those competitive athletes or who demand a higher standard, Gray’s Anatomy L.A. delivers world-class performance enhancing bodywork as well as a team of professional references from medical doctors, holistic dentists and coaches to Pilates instructors at the top of their game who will assist you to get to and stay at the top of yours.